History of Portland

Twilight Tombstones

Dear Liza,

The Friends of Lone Fir is a non-profit, volunteer group who help maintain and educate folks about our wonderful local pioneer cemetery. They put on tours of the Women in Lone Fir, symbolism and architecture of tombstones, and headstone cleaning workshops.

And this year, the Friends hosted a five Saturday series of tours called Twilight Tombstones. On each Saturday in October and one in November, guides lead four groups of twenty through the cemetery, telling stories of the folks buried there.

It was sold out in minutes!

This year, Auntie Bridgett volunteered with me. She greeted folks at the gate and steered them in the right direction.

My job was “tour support”, which means I made sure our group, lead by Peregrine and Paul, stayed together. I also answered extra questions from the folks in the group. It was a delightful, educational, exhausting evening.

The fun began even before the tours started! A friendly group of Zombie Carolers came by after serenading the Dead, and shared their songbook with us. Their songs are not for the squeamish, featuring such delightfully gruesome tunes as “Rudolph the Undead Reindeer” and “Good King Wenceslas Tastes Great.”

Love,

Grandma Judy

Walk-Through with the Dead

Dear Liza,

At the end of this month, I will volunteer to help the Lone Fir Cemetery with its Tour of Untimely Departures. And this week, we had our first walk-through.
Our leaders of the day were Margaret and Katie.

These two fine ladies walked our group of about 20 volunteers around Lone Fir, explaining how the tour will work. We followed each of the two routes (called North and South) and stopped by each of the graves where an actor will play the person who untimely departed (that usually means they died young).

A few of the actors were with us, to get the feel of things and practice their speeches. The actress who plays Maude McCroskey even came in costume and make up! She told her sad tale of being murdered by her abusive ex-husband, and we were all sad. But then she got to the part where HE became the last person executed in Multnomah County.

On a lighter note, the woman portraying Chloe Connelly Boone Curry told the story of her life, more than her death. She was the great granddaughter of Daniel Boone and came west with her family as a young woman. She became the first teacher in Oregon outside the mission system. She had the perfect demeanor for a teacher… sweet, loving, and with an strong backbone. She reminded me a little bit of myself.

Four graves are visited on each tour, with lots of interesting stories in between. The afternoon walk-through went well, and I look forward to our dress rehearsal next week and then the main event on October 28!

P.S. I couldn’t resist this picture of Margaret and a fellow ghoul admiring a brand new headstone made for a recently-passed fellow. The etched portrait and the leaves are so colorful!

Love,

Grandma Judy

A “New” Family at Lone Fir

Dear Liza,

Auntie Bridgett and I went for a walk in Lone Fir Cemetery the other day, in between rain showers. There were squirrels everywhere! They were being so friendly that it was a little alarming, fixing us with their little squirrel eyes as if to say, “Well, do you have treats for me, or not?”

As we stepped quickly to get pictures of the furry little guys, I noticed a set of headstones I hadn’t before. Particularly, this one.

Ollie Fliedner was just thirteen when she died “near Dallas Ogn”.
Dallas is a small town south west of here. I wanted to know more about her and her family.

Looking in old, digitized copies of The Oregonian newspaper, I fell down the usual ancestry rabbit hole. Mr. William Fliedner was from Germany and got barber training in New York when he first arrived in America, around 1850. After moving west and failing at gold mining, he started his business empire with a hair cutting and barber saloon in Corvallis. He married Chloe Norton, who had come to Oregon in a covered wagon. They moved to Portland and did well enough that by 1906 the family was able to build The Fliedner Building, which still stands today at the corner of SW 10th.

Chloe and William, Ollie’s parents, were prominent business folks

Mr. Fliedner was prominent in local politics as well, being appointed to the Fire Commission and running for office. He and his wife, Chloe Norton Fliedner, had two children, Ollie and William Louis. Ollie, whose headstone had caught my eye, died when she was just 13. I haven’t been able to learn anything about her short life or early death.

Their remaining child, W. Louis Fliedner, named after his father but called by his middle name to avoid confusion, married Gertrude Miller. Louis and Gertrude had two children; Barbara Jane Fliedner, who later married a Mr. Farmen, and a son, yet another William Louis. This man was the most recent headstone in this family grouping.

This William Louis Fliedner was born in 1915, served in World War II, and passed away in 2009. I still need to find out more about him, but he must have been well loved, living to 94 with a nickname like “Uncle Woo Lucky”!

I love getting to know more about Portland’s history through the folks who lived here, even when information is hard to come by.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Trying to Make it Work

Dear Liza,

I have written almost 1,000 blogs since July 2017, using the WordPress.com site. I have written about Portland’s history and places to visit, as well as the joys and difficulties of everyday life here. I am now thinking of turning all this writing into small books, which could go out into the world.

I hope to compile blogs on one topic (starting with our historic Lone Fir Cemetery), print them out, and offer them for sale. Auntie Bridgett Spicer does this with her wonderful Art-O-Rama zines, collections of writings and art that she sells online and at the SideStreet Arts gallery.

The difficulty of moving my Word Press writings into any other format, in order to print them out, was my first challenge. I asked Bridgett and read Q and A pages, looking for a way to make it work. Then I found something by a knowledgable fellow who basically said, “Wordpress doesn’t want you to do this. It is made to not allow you to do this.” Hmmm. Well, then, I’ll do it another way.

So today I start doing it another way. I will hunker down and re-type my blogs about Lone Fir, using a split-screen to make sure I don’t drift too far from the originals. I will fetch my photos from Pictures and splice them in. I will tighten up language and get rid of repetition, while trying to keep the language fresh and fun.

I am excited about this new level of exposure for my writing, even though I have no idea where it may end up. As Gandalf said, “You never know what may happen, once you set foot outside your door.”

Off to write!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Ventura Park

Dear Liza,

Our dear Volkswagen needed some service the other day, so we drove miles east to the dealership. We had an hour to kill while the oil got changed and the tires adjusted, so we took a picnic, art supplies, and found a new park!

Ventura Park is a little over seven acres of grass and trees in the Hazelwood neighborhood of East Portland. It is on Stark Street, which used to be called Baseline Road. One of the 1850 mile markers is set in the corner, showing that it is seven miles from the Willamette River. These markers were set every mile along Baseline Road, which was the main road that farmers in this area used to get their goods to the markets on the river.

There are 121 trees in Ventura Park, many of which were planted back in 1959 when the city bought the land as a park for new post-war housing boom in East Portland. The website for the park has a map to show which trees are where, so this is a good place to learn about different trees. The 37 species include Blue Spruce, Ginkoes, and Deodar Cedars, which have aged well. The park has a foresty area, and also a baseball diamond and lots of grass for kids to play.

There is also something I have never seen before. It is a ‘pump track’, a small dirt ring track for little kids to ride their bikes on. It is designed with banked corners and small rises so that, with practice, a kid could ride all the way around without having to pedal their bike! We saw a few kids enjoying the track… some pedaled, some didn’t. They sure were having fun!

There is a smooth paved walkway all the way around the park, and we saw an older gentleman doing smooth, slow laps in the Fall sunshine. There are interesting stainless steel and stone sculptures, too.

We got a call that said our car was ready, so we had to scoot away. I hope we can come back to Ventura Park and see some more

Love,

Grandma Judy

Another Transit Adventure, Part 2

Dear Liza,

At Tanner’s Spring Park, we all enjoyed the undulating fence made from old railroad rails and the paths paved with ballast from sailing ships.

The Spring itself rises through a paved circle and meanders along tiny streams on its way to the Willamette, creating an environment enjoyed by birds, insects, and lizards, and us! We imagined our characters shrinking to one inch tall and adventuring on the tiny “river” and flying between the tall grasses. My delight in this nature preserve surrounded by glass high-rises must have been contagious.

At lunch time, the kids agreed on sushi. We stopped at Sinju, where the ladies were very accommodating and made Kestrel mango sushi. Though she ended up mostly lunching on the crackers and fruit I had brought along, her roll didn’t go to waste: Jasper enjoyed his California roll AND his sister’s lunch. He’s a growing dragon, after all.

Walking toward the streetcar home, we watched it go by…but no harm done. It went by just in front of Cool Moon Ice Cream! A wonderful snack, Shel Silverstein poems (I always bring books on adventures) and interesting knit cow heads helped pass the time until the next streetcar.

Our energy was starting to fade as we watched the city pass by the windows. Crossing the Tilikum Crossing Bridge, we had incredible views of Mt. Hood with a fresh frosting of snow, rising like a ghost over the east side of Portland.

We switched from the streetcar to the Orange line at OMSI and rode it just one stop down to get off by Books with Pictures. We were all pretty much out of gas. The kids tucked in with books on the beanbag chairs, and I walked home and napped for an hour. Adventuring is exhausting!

Love,

Grandma Judy